How To Repair Concrete And Save Money

How are you doing, guys? I'm Scott, with everyday home

repair

s. Let me walk you through the process of

repair

ing a large chunk that broke off of your

concrete

sidewalk or driveway, like I did here. It is a very accessible project, but if you do not have experience with the products and tools you need it can result in less than desirable results. This one here will use a fast setting

concrete

and within an hour I should be able to drive my truck over this, which we're actually going to do to put this in. to the test, so let's jump in now first.

I'll just take an EDG or you can also use a shovel and just loosen up that compacted dirt around the edge of the bit that we're going to remove, then I'll take a big Spike and lift one end up and twist it to make it more manageable, just hit it a couple of times with a mallet and then that will break it into pieces that are easy to move and won't hurt you trying to lift a large piece, you can also weigh those pieces if you want to get a better idea of ​​the volume you are replacing, if it's not easy to measure that area and then multiply it by the thickness to get your volume. of concrete that you will need to buy, but now I am just going to work this terrain with some hand tools.

I have a lot of compacted clay on the right side and I want to work it a little lower. so I can put a better base here and compact it, which will give us a better chance for this new patch to last longer and withstand the seasonal changes that we get in illo. Now I'm going to start laying the new base. and prepare to put some rebar on this side of the slab to hold everything together, but before you do that I think it's worth taking a look here, this side was the original deck that was built with the house for the driveway and then this was an expansion that I'm not sure when, but two different teams did it here.

It's probably hard to see but there is more base added on this side and the overall thickness of the pad is around 4 inches which is best practice at least in my area here I didn't really see any gravel base and there is a lot of compacted clay that just doesn't give a good base and over time it can settle a little bit like we saw and then if I look at the thickness, I'm just shy of three on this side, which again you want to go to 4 Ines to give you a opportunity and it doesn't look like it has any wire mesh or rod or anything on this side, so it's not surprising that they settle over time. down and then I had a crack here and then that's where we had the failure so let's go ahead and we'll start building this with gravel, tying up some pieces of Rod and then putting our shape so we can start putting the new one in. concrete now with A/2 in masonry drilling rig on my rotary hammer drill drill three holes now the angle at which I am drilling these holes I have a rhyme or reason for that because I want them to intersect so I can easily tie the three pieces of rod together to match these holes.

I'm using number four rod and I'll just cut them to size knowing that I have to hammer them with a small sled to sink them into the existing concrete pad and again now. you'll see how they intersect and that's where those angles came into play so three pieces we'll use two small wire ties to hold them together and then I probably should have put the aggregate in first and then it would have been much larger. It's easier to compact this into the rock, which is a bit large. It's good to have a 3/4 inch rock mix up to the findings and that makes it easier to compact and then we'll just wire brush away the existing concrete to help the new. concrete bond with a bit of adhesive, so now estimating how much material you need is critical, obviously you don't have to do this on your own project.

I'm just doing this for demonstration purposes of the way I calculated it. My overall volume of the space is not a perfect square or rectangle, which would be easy, it would be length times width and then our depth to get our cubic feet, but mine is a little irregular, so what I did was just divide it into two right triangles, this one on this side is 27 inches by 17 inches, so I just multiply them and then I multiply them by 1/2 because it's a right triangle which gives me 230 inches squared for the area of ​​this side and then I converted it. to square feet by dividing by 144, which is just 12*12, so we convert it to square feet and that's 1.6 square feet.

Now multiply by the depth, it's 4 inches or 33 feet and then that will give me the volume on this side. I need to fill with some buffer to give me 0.53 cubic feet. This is what I'm going to relate to what it says on the bag of the Quick Creed or whatever you're using now. I was originally going to use a quick set but I don't think it's a great idea for the homeowner so I'll show you what product I'll use. I did the same thing on this side, it was just a little bit wider here at 18 inches and you can see it goes down the same. calculations, then I need for this total area this total volume.

I'm going to need 1.09 cubic feet to fill this now. I recommend that you put a small buffer in that you don't want to pour the concrete into only to find out that you are short on material so always go up a little bit more to make sure you have enough material. Now let's show you what we're going to use and start mixing it. What I will use today is a quick but specific preview. I'm going to use the faster 5,000 PSI standard, I think it's around 3,000 PSI and that's going to be in general, what can this concrete handle? 5,000 PSI and as it goes up it will be a stronger concrete, just know that 5,000 PSI goes up to that.

Concrete strength actually takes 28 days for concrete to fully cure, so once you put it in place, it starts to dry, you can open it to foot traffic in about eight hours, but I'm not going to drive on it. him for about 2 days. giving it some time to set up, so keep that in mind whether you are doing a sidewalk or if you are doing a driveway. Now I got some adhesive, this is so I can attach this new concrete to the existing platform that has the rod coming out of this new concrete. I want to join it to that platform, but not to the other side.

I'm not trying to put it together on both sides. I'm going to try to get a border and it's basically equivalent to an expansion. bond between the original pad that has that kind of curve and then the new concrete that we're putting in, so I just got a little brush and a cup in here so I can apply that adhesive. I have a piece of 2x4 here. so I can go ahead and pull the concrete along the form making sure it is level and easily remove the excess concrete. I'm going to use a hoe to mix it in this wheelbarrow and just shovel it in.

Now once we start finishing up, I just have a pretty cheap magnesium float from Husky. Here you can get it at Home Depot and you will see links to all of these products below the video for your reference. Now I'm not too worried about the finish. but you may want to control depending on what type of smooth finish you want, but I'm going to need to use an edger here, this will give me my radius. I want that both in the shape and I also want a radius between the existing ones. Original concrete platform with that curve that will be a little difficult.

I'm going to have to tilt this and work on that edge, but hopefully we can do it, so an edger will also be helpful, so these 350 pound bags will give me 1.125 cubic feet compared to the 1.09 I calculated at the time. get the area and depth above. We'll mix it with 10 quarts of water and it will give me a pretty wet mix, but it will work very well and then it's easy to work with that wet mix and finish it, since I'm pretty limited in my concrete finishing experience and didn't appear on camera, but first I wet the area and also applied that white adhesive to the uneven concrete. slab with the rod coming out of it, that's the side we want this new concrete to adhere to and then we're going to have an expansion joint on that curved side to give it a little bit of flexibility in the future so it can move regardless of ti, then I'll take the magnesium float and start working with it and start seeing where I'm low and where I've got some high spots.

Once I see those high spots, then I can take that type of 2x4. Remove things by referencing the surface of the existing concrete and then also the outside form that was placed exactly level with the adjacent concrete, then we'll just add some spots that are low and continue working with a magnesium float now once. It's where I want it to be. I'll let it sit for a while. I let it sit for about 30 to 45 minutes. You can let it sit for much longer. You will begin to see the cream or moisture coming off. the top because I wanted to work this edge close to the form but I also wanted to set that edge on the curve there that radius curve because I don't want this new patch to necessarily be attached to that existing side.

I want there to be some movement there so it can crack and we can have movement in the future at that time, now don't forget to clean your tools and that's it, and have some extra concrete like this one that I just put on an old deck, so you can put it . in his truck and generally in his area. Your Ready Mix, the concrete truck locations have a place where you can dump that concrete, so I'm just taking this concrete from this project and the last project and dumping it there to get rid of it. So we're about 6 hours into the drying process and everything looks pretty good now for the finish, all I did was use that big sponge and vacuum up a little bit of moisture from the top which gives it a rough finish and it was I'm just trying to match the rough finish of the surrounding slabs.

I didn't do a brush finish that you sometimes see on sidewalks and I certainly didn't use my troll to smooth it out like a concrete garage floor. Now check the concrete specifications. you use this 5000 PSI from Quickrete, you'll want to wait 12 hours before anyone walks on it and I'm going to wait about 3 days before driving on this concrete tomorrow a little after 24 hours. I'll go ahead and get my forms out here and then start filling in some of that dirt. Remember that the curing process is critical and the entire curing process actually takes 28 days. It takes 28 days for it to reach 5,000 PSI if cured properly now, depending on. the temperature and how dry it is outside, you will need to spray a light mist on this concrete wetting it at least once a day for the first 5 to 7 days.

You don't want this to dry too quickly because that could cause some shrinkage and cracking in the concrete and it won't even come close to the 5,000 PSI it could deliver if cured properly over the current 28 days, if you want to check out another interesting project we did in which I sealed a very large crack between a sidewalk with the use of pool noodles, a lot of people wonder this, but 2 years later it is still going strong. Watch this video here. I'll walk you through the entire process, so thank you for joining me in this video and we'll see you.

Be careful next time.